Gary Xean's Blog O' Life

Hello, my name's Gary...

2012-01-23T22:45:00.000Z

...And I'm a Skyrimaholic.

As you probably guessed, I got The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for Christmas, and I've just become completely obsessed with the game. For the last month my Twitter page has been dominated by posts about it. On the first day I had it I played it for about seven hours non stop. I'm actually writing this post at a natural break in the game. It has taken over my life.

On the upside, it's got me some extra followers on Ye Olde Twitter and I understand all the "arrow in the knee" jokes that have been circulating on the Internet for so long.

So that's about all from me. I need to go back to slaying dragons.

I'm the godamn Batman!

2011-11-30T23:00:00.001Z

I recently read an article on the internet outlining someone's theory for the new Batman film, Dark Knight Rises, basically saying that Christopher Nolan is going to kill off Bruce Wayne and that a random character introduced in another movie will take up the role as Batman (http://www.cracked.com/blog/advanced-batman-theory-why-nolan-will-kill-bruce-wayne/). I like this theory, but there's a few things that stood out for me.

Firstly, the author spends a few paragraphs talking about some of Christopher Nolan's other films, and attempts to tie them into the "Dark Knight" trilogy of Batman films. I think that this is a bit of a stretch, to be honest. The author was clutching at straws and trying to increase the word count. I can understand the point they're trying to make, but it's a bit like saying that all of Tim Burton's films are hinting at plot points at one of his future films. I think that it's a moot point that the director just so happened to make another series of films that talk about making an audience expect one thing, just to deliver the opposite to them.

What I also want to talk about with the author is how he explains what he thinks the role of Bane will be in the movies. In the comics, Bane broke Batman's back, leaving Bruce Wayne paralyzed and the role of Batman (temporarily) filled by Azrael. Bruce got better, though, and retakes the Batman cowl.

The author has said that this won't happen in the film, simply because the film isn't trying to recreate the comics. I couldn't agree more on this, but the author hints at Bane actually killing Batman. I can't picture this happening. For some reason, I can't picture the main character being killed off by a villian that not many people will really know. The obvious choice would have been Joker, but, alas, Heath Ledger isn't around anymore, and it was stated in Dark Knight Returns that Joker had no intention of killing Batman.

So, this brings us to another interesting point. Let's assume that Batman does indeed die in Dark Knight Rises and that the role of Batman is taken up by someone else. Christopher Nolan has stated that he won't put a Robin into his films. This is where the seemingly random character comes in. With no Robin to take up the cowl, it falls to someone else to fill the post. If this happens, it will annoy a lot of comic fans. In the comics, Batman was first Bruce Wayne, then following the events of Final Crisis Bruce Wayne was believed to be dead, the role of Batman was taken up by Dick Grayson- at the time known as Nightwing, but more famously known as Robin while Bruce was Batman. The natural progression of Batman is that the cowl gets passed onto Robin- a sort of master/student dynamic.

Batman needs a Robin, simply because Robin is the second in command. Anything happens to Batman, Robin steps up and takes his place. As Christopher Nolan isn't including a Robin in the movies, I think it's unlikely that you'll see a new Batman. The character the author of the linked article states that the character he thinks will take up the role of Batman after Bruce Wayne is someone called John Blake. Coincidently, when Dick Grayson takes up the role of Batman the Robin is Tim Drake (a very similar sounding name). What we could see is instead of John Blake becoming Batman, he might form his own idendity. I highly doubt it will be Nightwing. That's Dick Grayson's role. When Bruce Wayne is revealed not to be dead, he retakes the role of Batman, Dick goes back to being Nightwing, and we're back where we left off.

That is, however, it's revealed that Bruce has a son, Damian- the mother is Talia aAl Ghul, the daughter of Ra's al Ghul. Damian became the new Robin when Tim Drake decided to branch out and become his own crime fighter, under the name Red Robin. I'm going to call it- in Dark Knight Rises Bruce Wayne does indeed die, and John Blake decides to take his place, but not as Batman. I think he's going to replace Bruce, but under the "Red Robin" guise. I think that John will think that you can't replace Batman with a click of your fingers and a flash of lightning, so he comes up with his own crime fighting vigilante.

And thus, the movie version of Red Robin was born. I know that Red Robin isn't that well known a character from the comics, but neither was Mad Hatter, and he was recently featured in the Arkham City video game. What's to say that another relative obscure character won't be featured in the upcoming film(s)?

That's my take on where the celluloid Batman is going. I may be right, I may not be. We'll just have to wait and see.

While I've still got your attention, why not hit me up on Twitter @Gary_Xean? You know, for shits and giggles.

Shakin' up the system

2011-11-23T22:08:00.001Z

I got a plan. A cunning plan. A plan that I feel needs to be introduced into this country as soon as possible (obviously). I want to start a revolution- a social revolution, if you will. I want to shake up the schooling and work system in this country.

Now, I feel that a bit of background information's needed for this post. I ply my trade within the confines of the retail sector. It's not a job I hate (most of the time), but it's not a job I love. The biggest downside is that I have to interact with people on a daily basis. I know, I know, I knew about that before I started the job, but I never realised how irritating it can get sometimes. When you get people who quite clearly can't be bothered to do anything for themselves, that's when the job gets annoying. When you get people who are, shall we say, not the brightest tool on the shelf, and you realise that you may as well be talking to the nearest wall, that's when the job gets mildly frustrating. When you get people who treat you like something you stepped in, that's when the job gets downright hateful. This is the reason I want to shake up the school system- these problems all come down to a lack of respect- a lack of respect for the staff and a lack of respect for their working environment.

So, how do we solve this problem? Well, it's actually very simple. We need to find a way for people to learn respect for the retailers who work hard every day to keep their customers happy. Obviously not all customers can leave a store happy. Some of these people will let you know that they're not happy, and demdand that you do something, citing phrases like "the customer is always right" and "retail law" and other buzzwords they've heard on watchdog shows on television. The fact of the matter is this: the customer is not always right. In fact, the customer is very rarely right. This is one of the things we need to teach people. By breaking down this barrier of ignorance you open up the opportunity for understanding and learning.

Probably the most effective way for people to learn about an industry is to actually work in it. At the moment, the British schooling system has a work experience program, where children who are 15/16 will go out for two weeks and work for a company. This system is, frankly, useless. Two weeks isn't long enough for a person of that age to fully understand and comprehend what's happening within a business. Plus, you get children who want to work in, for example, a care home, but instead get told that the placement's full so they have to go work for their local shop. Because they don't want to be there, they won't make any effort to do the job. I know this, I've seen it firsthand. As such, we need to get rid of the work experience program in it's current form.

Instead, we put in a totally radical system. When children leave school, they have to do six month's work. But not just any work, they have to do six month's retail work. Believe it or not, retail work is more than just stacking shelves. It's an extremely complex industry, and there's a hell of a lot more happening behind the scenes than most people realise. Speaking on a personal level, I have to liase with five different outside companies, which I wasn't expecting when I first started the job. I think people would be amazed what actually goes into the running of a shop.

Now, you obviously need to give these people an incentive for doing the job, otherwise they won't turn up to it. The most obvious one is to pay them for it. At the time of writing, the minimum wage for school leavers under the age of 18 is £3.68 per hour. If you get them working 30 hours a week, that roughly equates to the same amount of time they would spend in school, and gives them a weekly pay of £110.40 per week, depending if the individual employers wish to pay them more or not. An additional point on this is that it's not really fair for the employers to be forced to pay school leavers this much, so the government will supplement half of it- £55.20 comes from a government grant, and the rest comes out of the employers pocket. When these children get older and start to pay tax, they'll effectively pay this money back and pass it on to the next generation of school leavers. This would actually mean you get a permanent circulation of currency- when someones's 15/16 they don't think about saving up their cash, they think about how they can go out with their friends, spend it and enjoy it. Look at that, I'm also putting forward a solution to help the economic crisis without even trying.

Money can't be the only incentive for people that age. This is where I think the Americans have the right idea by having a permanent record for people. I think this is a system that we need in this country. Not only can you put people's school grades onto it, you can also put if they completed their six months retail service or not. If they did, then great. If not, then they effectively "fail" school. To put it another way, it becomes part of the curriculum. Granted, there's no exam for it, there's no grade for it. If they turned up to their placement every day and put honest-to-god effort in, then that works in their favour. If they turned up every day but didn't bother to do anything, then that goes against them. If they don't turn up at all, they don't get paid and it goes on their record, thus rendering them unreliable and, in turn, unemployable. If you don't do your placement, then you only apply for the bare minimum of benefits, so it encourages you to actually turn up and the do the job even more. By making the downside as bad as possible, you're practically ensuring the fact that people will turn up and be bothered to do the job.

There are no doubt holes in this theory. I like to think that I've thought this through pretty damn well, but if there is anything, I encourage you to point it out to me so I can refine it.

Well, that's my theory. My main idea is for people to see when happens in retail and thus they gain a respect for the job and the people, and that the respect will be spread across the generations. Thank you for reading this far, and give me yo' opinions.

Why is Internet Explorer considered bad?

2011-10-03T23:49:00.001+01:00

In my many travels on the Interwebnet, I stumble across many different comparisons- Opinion A is different to Opinion B, Product A is cheaper than Product B, Language A is easier to learn than Language B, and so on and so forth. One thing that I stumbled across today was the subject of Internet browsers. This is a subject that I've touched upon before, but this time, I found myself drawn to it for a very simple reason.

Everyone hates Internet Explorer.

I decided to go to Google and ask the question "Why is Internet Explorer considered bad?" and Google found no results. Same with Bing. Both search engines gave me other options, though, and I decided to read through some of them. From what I can tell, people don't like IE (Internet Explorer) because it doesn't display websites the same as other browsers such as Opera and Firefox, and that there's security risks invloved with using it.

This is bullshit. I don't see the big deal here. Okay, so web developers need to find workarounds for their pages to be displayed identically with all browsers. I hate to tell you this, Mr. Web Developer, but that is your job. You are the one that is paid to make a webpage that will be displayed identically on every browser being used. If you need to make a workaround for your precious page to be displayed on one browser, then you have to do it. That is why you call yourself a web developer, because you are making Internet pages that everyone can view. You're not making webpages for people only using, for example, Safari can view. If you were, then you would be a Safari Web Developer. But you're not. Deal with it.

As for those security issues attatched to IE? In case you people didn't notice, it's not about your web browser that puts you at risk, okay? It's the very fact that you're connected to the Internet in the first place that puts you at risk. If someone wants to gain access to your personal files, they'll do it via your web connection. Hackers don't give a damn what browser you're using. If there's a way for them to get onto your computer and steal your information, then they'll damn well do it. These security issues won't mean diddly squat if you've got decent, up-to-date anti-virus and firewall software. Hey presto, it's instantly harder to gain access to your machine.

I decided to have a look at the stats for this blog prior/during the writing of this post, and I discovered that the top three browsers that are used to view this blog are Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. The combined percentages of Opera and Firefox users is 33% while the percentage of IE users is 54%. Yes, you read that correctly. The majority of my readers use IE while the people who use Firefox and Opera combined is just over half that number. There are currently 21% more people using IE than Firefox and Opera combined, and I think that tells you something.

And because I'm feeling incredibly kind, I'm going to spell that out for you all elitist snobs out there.

There's nothing wrong with Internet Explorer.

Humanity lost it's way

2011-08-10T22:50:00.006+01:00

If you've been paying even the slightest bit of attention to the (UK) news recently, then it's highly likely that you've seen the story that's dominated the headlines these last few days: "Riots in London" is what sums it all up. The UK, a country that prides itself on it's civility and high standard of living, has descended into looting, rioting and general mayhem and destruction.

The video only shows a small amount of what was happening, yet at the same time, it sums it up a lot. It basically comes down to one thing- destruction for the sake of destruction.

It all started in the Tottenham area of London, where people were peacefully protesting over the death of a man in possession of a firearm after the police shot him, apparently without warning. I wasn't there, so I can't comment on if that's true or not, but somehow, the protest turned violent. The violence spread across London, people were giving reasons such as "[It's the] recession. We're bored and we've got no money." One person even claimed they were doing it to "get my taxes back." Idiocy doesn't even begin to cover it.

For a while, the mindlessness threatened to overrun the entire country, but people seemed to come to their senses, and it all slowly died away. Despite what you saw in the video, the police response was very minimal- it was almost as if they were scared to get involved. This lead to people talking about getting the army to diffuse the troublemakers, but there's an extremely good example against this course of action- did somebody say Northern Ireland?

Yes, there were riots in Northern Ireland, and the army were brought in to subdue the situation. The resulting standoff lasted 30 years.

So, what happens now? The violence has seemingly stopped, but I know for a fact that some retail outlets are still employing an extremely high level of caution, and with good reason- it only takes one or two people to start it up again, especially in the aftermath. The scenes are still fresh in people's minds, and if they've got the intelligence of a cheese sandwich (which, let's face it, most of the people rioting and looting do), then they'll want to imitate what they've seen on the magical picture box. And, thus, the mayhem will begin again.

There are many words that can be used to describe these people, but most of them can't be used in polite company. I'll leave it up to each individual to decide how extreme they want to take the descriptions, but I think that by my "cheese sandwich" remark it's an easy assumption that my own feelings are far from neutral on this one.

O Hai Dar

2011-07-07T00:27:00.002+01:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. "Oh Gary, it's been three months, when are you updating?" I don't hear you cry. But it has actually been about three months since my last update, and after reading my last post I thought to myself "Hey, it's been three months, let's go with that little throwaway gag I made".

So, what to tell? To be honest with you, there hasn't really been a lot of stuff that's changed for me. The last two or three weeks have had things happen that made me think about my life in general, and it also made me realise that I really know how to hold a grudge. I mean, seriously know how to hold a grudge. I'm talking the kind of grudge that you'd go to war over, the kind of grudge that you'd burn women and rape houses over. Or should that be the other way around...?

Anyway, I guess half the reason for my lack of updating is the fact that I never really have anything to say on this thing. I'm not overly opinionated, I don't live a fancy lifestyle or anything, and I generally stay out of trouble. The most exciting thing is my birthday in a few weeks- hitting the ripe old age of 26- and I don't know what I want to do to celebrate another year closer to the grave. Well, I know what I'd like to do, but if I say it then there's a slight chance that I'd end up doing time at Her Majesty's Pleasure.

So, I guess this is all from me for now. I'm not even going to bother saying that I'll update more often, as every time I say it I never do it. Maybe some reverse psychology will do the trick or something....

Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies

2011-04-01T23:35:00.006+01:00

Yeah, I kind of screwed up the whole updating thing, didn't I? Still, not to worry! I'm sure the Internet won't combust if I don't update my blog every six months or so, but I'm not taking that risk, dammit!

So, what's been in the news since I last updated? Well, you know, the usual- members of the royal family announcing wedding plans, floods in Australia, earthquakes in Japan, pretty ordinary stuff when you think about it. I mean, I can't think of the last time a week went by without a royal wedding being announced, or a country being ravaged by a natural disaster, or even a tyrannical leader being the target of a civil war.

Okay, that was a lie.

Let's face it, there's been a lot of doom and gloom recently. Something that I've been following is the civil war in Lybia, simply because we, Great Britain, got involved with the hostilities and I couldn't work out why for the life of me why we did. My point of view was that if the Lybians wanted to blow themselves up, then leave them to get on with it. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't marching down the streets of London with a giant placard and shouting "Bring Our Boys home!" to anyone that would listen. Hell, I didn't even mention it on my Twitter account, , so you know that there wasn't really a lot that I had to say on the matter (I have, however, been ripping the shit out of Olly Murs).

So, in other personal news, I got back from a two week trip to fabulous Las Vegas about a month ago, and I'm still getting all the photos we took put into albums. I think there was about 200 photos, although that number could be terribly wrong. I'm not going to count them now, I can't be bothered. I would tell you what we done out there, but as we all know, what happens in Vegas...

Seriously, though, once I get my backside in gear there's going to be a Vegas report. I'm not going to go into every little minute detail, simply because no-one really wants to know, I'd bet, and because it would take too much damn time, and heaven knows I don't have time to do that shit, especially as I've got stuff in the pipeline, plans that I want to actually follow up on and more trips to make.

Speaking of trips, me and the lovely girl are going into London for a couple of days- 17th and 18th April, to be precise. We're staying in a nice hotel near Oxford street, then we're going to see the show Stomp, which I really want to see again. If you're a fan of Blue Man Group and Shaolin Monk drumming exhibitions, then you'll love Stomp. I'm sure there's going to be some more about that later on. We're also planning on going to New York in October-ish, but we're not 100% certain on the dates yet. Again, I'm sure there'll be more on that as and when I get the info.

So that's about it from me for my three-monthly update. I say this every time, but I'm going to try and update this little bastich a bit more often from now on, so until then, track me on Twitter if you really want to, or you can hunt me down on Facebook if you're feeling really stalker-ish (yes, stalker-ish is a word now), or you can just keep checking back periodically if you so desire. Until then, little blog, I shall be seeing you peeps later.

Yay update

2010-12-28T23:34:00.002Z

Alright, this is a bit of a quick update really. It's late, I'm not 100% healthy, and there's shit I've got to talk about.

I've not really talked much about my personal/private life on this blog, and instead used it to canvas my opinions on various subjects and public matters. I know that's kind of against the spirit of a weblog, but I feel that the time has come to change that. The time has come for me to address a personal matter.

For a two year period I was in a relationship with a Canadian girl. This period started in January 2008 ended in November 2010. Me and the girl in question had been friends since late 2007. Now, you're probably noticing a lot of past tense in here, simply because I no longer consider this girl a friend. I no longer consider her a person, to be honest. I consider her a vile, two faced, hate filled shit bag.

She said she loved me, and I said I loved her, and we said this many a time. So when we broke up imagine my shock to see her calling me everything under the sun on her blog- asshole and bastard are the two words that suddenly spring to mind. She then decides to send me an email in which she was being as nice as you can imagine, kindly asking me to send her some stuff from this country- namely wine gums and condoms. So she's bascially called me everything you can imagine, but when she wants me to send her stuff so she can go fuck her new boyfriend (who she hasn't even met yet. I'm just sayin') safely, it kinda pisses me off.

She blames me for everything. She blames me for her being fucked up, she blames me for her not being able to get over her issues, she blames me for her life being a mess. She blames me for not taking her away from her shitty little life so that she can sit at home and let me work my bollocks off just so that she can eat every day. She was supposed to move over here and live with me, but that never happened because of her own laziness. For us to have been able to live somewhere we both would have needed to work. She started to look for a job, and her ex-step mother/friend of the family found a website for her where she could apply for nursing jobs here in the UK. That was all she done, especially when the applications she was recieving were for agencies that couldn't promise permanent work. She gave up. Instead, she spent her time looking for places to live that we couldn't afford. To sum up, she was more concerned about trying to find somewhere to live instead of finding work to afford the place to live.

She's talking about how she has a great job for a week, working in an office somewhere. Here's the kicker- she would never have got that if it weren't for the fact that her dad works in the same office. She has no qualifications, she has no desire to improve herself, and she has no drive. Hell, she couldn't even walk ten minutes down the street without needing to stop and rest. If it wasn't for her daddy, she'd still be jobless and penniless. And you know what? I think she'd be okay with that, just as long as she didn't have to go anywhere or do anything.

Now, where do I stand in all this? To be honest, I don't give two shits what she does. What does bother me is that she's talking all this crap about me. She's making me out to be the spawn of Satan, and she's made her family think the same thing about me. The only thing that's stopping me from flying over to Canada and beating some respect into her is that she's not worth it. I'm not going to spend the time, money and effort to try and change her mind because her opinion doesn't matter, to be honest. Why would I care what some small minded, stuck up, pathetic individual thinks about me when they can't even take their own life into their own hands? This person relies on their family to get them along in life, and while there's nothing wrong with family helping you out, when you start getting them to do everything for you, that's when you stop being a person and become a sponge. Oh, and did I mention that she stole money from me? Yep, she used my PayPal account to pay for goods and services without my knowledge. Again, the only thing stopping me from going to the police is that I really can't be bothered. I don't want to drag her into my life.

End of the day, I'm a good person. I fight for truth and justice, I don't take advantage of people and I'm not evil and corrupted. I would never blame others for something that is completely and utterly my fault. I wouldn't dare to do that. We all need to stand up and take blame for our own actions, regardless of if we want to or not. This girl also asked me to post back some of the stuff she'd left here in the afore mentioned email, and let me tell ya, she's got no chance in hell of me doing that. I am not going to spend another penny on her, especially not after what she's said about me. She needs to realise that you can't treat people like crap and get what you want.

She said she hates me. That's fine. I don't expect to be liked by every person I meet. But she needs to realise that hate leads to anger, and anger leads to destruction. So if I see her again, I'll destroy her. And I know that she'd read this and think that I wouldn't, but the fact of the matter is that hate doesn't do justice to what I now feel for her. Contempt is close. I don't think there is a word that accurately describes my feelings towards her now. I've moved on from her, I've got a new girl in my life, and she loves me as I am- she doesn't try to get me to shave my body hair, or to not gel my hair, and she doesn't mind that I have friends other than her. I realise that I made the wrong decision with Little Miss Canadian- I thought I was dating a woman, but in fact, I was dating a girl. A pompus, arrogant, thieving, despot of a girl. A girl who let fear rule her life. A girl who would readily blame others for her own shortcomings. A girl who would lash out when things didn't go her way.

So, Canadian Girl can talk all the crap she wants about me, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm better than her, as I speak the truth. I don't make up stories to make myself out to be the victim. I ended it with her because I was sick and tired of her shit. I was fed up with the fact that she thought I was fucking every female friend I've got. I was fed up with her not wanting me to go out with my friends because she doesn't have any friends of her own. I was sick and goddamn tired of her making me out to be a monster, when I was trying my hardest to make her realise how the world works. It got to the point where her jealousy and paranoia pushed me away, and there's no way she can blame me for that, even though she's justified to herself that I'm actually to blame for it. I can't be blamed for her not wanting to get help. Sure, she got help after we broke up, but that was too little, too late. She said that she didn't tell me the full extent of her problems because she didn't think I could cope with it. Truth is, by her not telling me the full extent of her problems it meant that I was less prepared and equipped to deal with them when the shit hit the fan. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.

And I forgot to mention those problems. She was paranoid, and decided to look through my files on my laptop, and delete some stuff, and add some stuff, and do god knows what else. All without my prior knowledge or even acknowledging it to me afterwards. She did not trust me, apparently, and it got me thinking what else she'd be doing behind my back. Was she reading my emails? Was she reading my text messages? For all I know she could have sent some text messages from my phone to my friends and I would have been none-the-wiser. The phone I was using at the time didn't keep a record of sent messages (opposed to the one I'm using now- hooray for smart phones!). She could have said anything to anyone. That's not good.

So, blog, that was a summary of what I'm thinking right now. I do believe that this is the longest post I've made to date, and with good reason. You can't sum up something like this in three or four sentences, although I openly admit that would depend on the length of the sentence.

So, until next time, blog, where the subject matter should hopefully be a lot brighter, happier and downright less emo.

Bebo update

2010-07-15T23:10:00.002+01:00

In my recent post, The top ten fads of the last twenty years, I commented about hoe Bebo was one of these fads- when I wrote the post, AOL were the owners, yet were undecided about the fate of Bebo.

I decided to checkon how Bebo was doing, and found that on June 17th 2010 AOL sold Bebo to a company called Criterion Capital Partners. The sale allegededly raised less then $10million.

I can't find out a lot about this company, but after a few searches on Google and other search engines, I found a company called Criterion Capital, which is a London-based investment bank. I found other sources citing Criterion Capital Partners as a California-based merchant bank/private equity group. Either way, we're probably looking at Bebo's new owners as being bankers.

So what does this mean for the social networking site? Well, it could be anything, really. I can't imagine bankers would be willing to put a lot of capital into a venture that AOL had dubbed as "worthless" at the time of sale, as they're highly unlikely to get a return. At the same time, with the correct thinking and attitude, Bebo could see a massive turnaround and become the next big thing again, thus forcing me to amend my list of fads.

Nothing yet has been revealed for discovered about the fate of Bebo, but with new owners and a new way of thinking, maybe, just maybe, Bebo can become bigger and better than ever before.

Top ten fads of the last 20 years

2010-06-08T23:45:00.004+01:00

Let's be honest, we all like to follow trends, and we enjoy the ones that work, and we all laugh at the ones that fail. Therefore, I decided it was about time we looked at the best fads of the last twenty years and have a collective laugh at the failure on display.

Number 1- The MiniDisc
The MiniDisc was supposed to be Sony's attempt to re-invent how people listened to music. Launched in September 1992 in Japan it was an upgrade from the old style cassette tapes, but wasn't at the level of quality you would get from CDs. The cost of the discs coupled with the lower sound quality compared to CDs meant that the MiniDisc was doomed from conception, especially as you were getting 80 minutes worth of audio- the same as you got with CDs, which were a lot cheaper and accessible.

Number 2- UMD
Sticking with Sony, the UMD (Universal Media Disc) was another attempt to re-invent people's social activites, only this time it was the world on portable gaming and entertainment Sony were targeting. Released as the media carrier for Sony's PlayStation Portable device, the UMD was being sold as the future of handheld gaming, movies, music- pretty much everything. Unfortunately, a large number of film houses didn't share Sony's vision, leading to a number of films never seeing a UMD release. With Sony's release of the latest model of PlayStation Portable not housing a UMD port in favour of digital downloads, it seems that even it's creator has finally decided to give up on yet another failure.

Number 3- The Atari Jaguar
Released globally by the start of 1995, the Atari Jaguar was Atari's last hope in the gaming console market, but with the 64-bit label slapped on the side, the first home console to be 64-bit. However, with a $250 pricetag and a relatively poor lineup of games, the Jaguar failed to be the gold mine Atari had hoped for.

Number 4- HDVD
The HDVD is the Betamax of the 2000-decade. Competing with the Blu-Ray Disc from Sony, it failed to break into the marketplace like the Betamax before it, and thus sank into obscurity. While still on sale in Asia (most notably China), the HDVD will mark an attempt for someone to attempt to make themsevles famous, and fail.

Number 5- The Atkins Diet
The Atkins Diet was officially released in 1972, but it wasn't until 2003 that the popularity of avoiding carbohydrates peaked. It seemed that every celebrity and go-getter was on the Atkins Diet, until they all realised a year later that it was all bollocks and that they'd be better off excercising and eating low-fat foods as opposed to depriving your body of carbs, which are essentially the body's fuel.

Number 6- MP3 CD
Sticking with the disc theme, the MP3 CD allowed people to put hundreds of songs onto a CD as opposed to the "regular" number of around 20. The only downside is that not many stereo systems could play them, and the compression method used caused a significant loss of sound quality. With the release of MP3 players, the MP3 CD faded from memory, though the concept was great, the actuality turned out not to be so great.

Number 7- Los del Rio
During the summer of 1994 (and every family wedding since) everyone in the world had Macarena fever. An extremely catchy pop number from a Spanish band that no-one had ever heard of, the Macarena stormed the charts, staying propped in the number one spot for seemingly forever. Then when the dust settled the band simply vanished and were never heard from again.

Number 8- Bebo
It came after MySpace but before Facebook, yet Bebo was never sure if it wanted to be it's own site or a merging of the afore mentioned sites. It had it's share of popularity, though, and AOL decided to buy it in March 2008. Just over two years later AOL announced that it was either going to sell or shut down Bebo due to falling user numbers, despite allowing third party developers to create content for the site.

Number 9- Chuck Norris Jokes
We've all heard them. They were funny at first, now they're just stupid. Chuck Norris does not know the last digit of Pi, nor can he slam a revolving door.

Number 10- Dance Dance Revolution
Rhythm action games are fun, there's no denying that, and Dance Dance Revolution was the first of it's kind. We've all seen the arcade machines, and we've all seen the home ports with the poorly made dance mats. It launched in 1998, and while still releasing machines in arcades, it's popularity never reached the peaks that later games such as Guitar Hero reached, and is just simmering away in the background until it's inevitable demise from the arcades.

Fighting off the winter blues

2010-01-16T16:03:00.002Z

I stumbled across this video today while randomly browsing YouTube, and decided to watch it and read some of the comments. It was during the course of reading these comments (or at least some of them- there's nearly 2000 at the time of writing this) I found out that a British newspaper decided that they were going to get outraged by this. I, personally, fail to understand why this is something to get annoyed at. Okay, yes, it was unprofessional, but I think that it's hard to stay "on form" for every hour of every day. There's going to be a point when the non-working persona of someone will start to appear.

I want to make one thing clear at this point- as a British citizen myself, I pay taxes that pay for the police, etc. If we were going to get technical, those police are sliding down the hill on my money- I help pay their wages and for their equipment, so this is technically true. But honestly, this behaviour doesn't bother me. Okay, so the police like to have fun. So what? Don't we all? We've got far bigger things to be worried about than a few policemen (gasp) enjoying themselves.

The Art of Social Networking

2009-06-09T22:42:00.004+01:00

Facebook recently announced that it would be introducing the option to have a link on your profile's URL- it would be, according to the official blog, a way of making it easier for your friends to find you. The only problem I can see with this is that Facebook already uses people's real names for people searches, so why do they feel the need to add this feature? I think the answer's simple- to turn into MySpace.

It's no secret that MySpace popularised social networking- it practically invented it, so I feel that a lot of people set it as their benchmark for how a similar site should be run. Facebook changed that, mainly by having customisable content on every level- you could add photos, videos, tell people what you were doing at any given moment, play games within the browser you were using, so much stuff it was impossible to keep track of it all. It was new, fresh and people loved it. Facebook soon became the people's choice for social networking.

But then MySpace hit back- they started adding customisable content for people's profiles, too. They allowed you to share photos, videos, tell people what you were doing at any given moment, play games within the browser you were using, so much stuff you couldn't count it. In fact, if you think about it, the idea was lifted wholesale from Facebook. Or to put it another way, MySpace stole the idea from Facebook.

Then came the integrated instant messaging service. Fcaebook had the idea first- a toolbar across the bottom of your browser built into Facebook's code and fully integrated with the site and it's functions. It was innovative, and not many people had seen this function before. But it wasn't long before MySpace came up with their own integrated instant messaging service, and the interface was exactly the same, but with a different colour scheme. Again, MySpace had stolen an idea wholesale from Facebook.

Now Facebook has had the idea to make a username part of a profile's URL. This is nothing new. In fact, MySpace has been doing this since the site's conception. It was the main draw of MySpace for a lot of people- the ability to maintain anonyminity on the Internet, but still allow people to find them. It was an idea also used by Bebo, the long lost cousin of the social networking world. But now Facebook are using it, and I personally feel that it's a direct retaliation towards MySpace for all the theft that had been previously employed by MySpace regarding content.

But let's look at the bigger picture here. Social networking is starting to become the same kind of thing- customisable content; an easy to find screen name; the ability to talk to your friends on the site in real time without having to download additional content- there's no innovation anymore, no-one seems willing to try new ideas, instead going back to the old tried and tested formulae. It reminds me a lot of the gaming world when a console's starting to come towards the end of it's lifespan- developers decide that in order to try and optimise what little income they might have, they decide to rehash old ideas (usually from the best recieved and best selling games released on the console) and release them as original ideas, but they're never as good as the games they stole from. The buying public normally spot the imposter and shun them out of loyalty for the original game. That obviously can't happen with social networking, as every website is stealing from every other website, leading to a sea of clones and pale imitations.

So do we boycott social network sites? It's extreme, I admit, and not a course of action I'll personally be taking, but if you feel that it'll help, then sure, boycott Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. I don't know what you'll achieve out of it, but at least you can say that you tried.

I am who I am because of who I'm not

2009-05-17T22:24:00.002+01:00

There comes a time in life when everyone has to stand back and ask themselves "What am I going to do?" It can relate to anything- a simple problem at work, deciding what to order in a bar, but my personal "What am I going to do?" moment will always be where my life's going. For me, "What am I going to do?" always relates to my future. Am I going to stick with the job I've got, or am I going to try and find something different? Am I always going to stay living in the same town that I've lived in for most of my life? Hence, "What am I going to do?" is more of a philisophical question.

Normally, I'm very happy to just stumble along and make decisions as and when life throws them at me. But somewhere things have changed for me recently. I've realised that I need to start thinking more long-term and stop living for the moment, that I've actually got to start planning things. I need to start thinking about long-term, tax-free saving accounts. I need to think about investing in stocks and shares, so that I can build myself a nestegg for when I finally retire. I have to seriously think about these things instead of just doing something because it was a "good idea at the time". Something in my head's recently told me that just won't cut it anymore. I have to be responsible for myself, and for my future.

This is where my statement of originality in the blog title comes in. The reason I've never planned ahead^* is because that's what other people do. I'm not other people. I am who I am because of who I'm not. I've said it for years. Planning is for the others. Those who are scared to be spontaneous and daring.

What brought this on, you may ask. You can ask all you want, because I can't give you an answer. I've just had this nagging thought in my head that things won't be like they are now forever. I need to re-evaluate my life, my talents, my hobbies, my plans. Everything needs to be looked at for me. Because I've somehow realised that I'm no longer an individual, I'm another faceless drone working for other people that don't appreciate or understand me, and that my life has the option of not being a string of successes, but being a string of failures. I failed to make my writing stand out. I failed to make my drawing stand out. I failed at getting a half-decent job. I failed at making this blog stand out. I failed at making and keeping friends.

I failed.

Two words I never use in conjunction with myself, but that's the sad truth. I failed myself, and now I'm just a regular person, doing regular things, and I'll never be able to live the life of someone that actually done something with their life, as it's no longer possible for me to actually do anything. I've not got anything that makes me stand out. I'm normal, and I now realise that.

But despite that, I'm still me. I'm still who I am because of who I'm not. I still like to think that I'm a good person. I still like to think that I've touched at least one person in my life with my work. But until I know that I've done that, I'm going to have to be happy with being adequate.

*I'm talking about a major time period, such as years, as opposed to weeks or months.

Remember the good old days?

2009-02-12T20:19:00.003Z

Remember the good old days of the Internet? The days when there were only a couple of browsers and everything worked well? Well, it seems that a lot changes in ten years and now we're bombarded with over a dozen different Internet browsers each with their own reasons for and against using them. But it seems that web developers are only creating sites that are optimised for a single browser- namely Mozilla's Firefox browser.

Now, I've not got anything against Firefox apart from the fact that I don't use it myself. The main reason people used it was for tabbed browsing,a nd now that Internet Explorer 7 has that particular feature, in my mind Firefox is redundant software. Yet people still insist on not only using it over IE (Internet Explorer) but they insist on optimising websites for use with this browser- that means that people that use IE such as myself can't see these site's full potential. Which is stupid, as you're clearly limiting your potential userbase by means of filtering how they view and interact with your site.

There's an Internet forum (that shall remain nameless to protect them from themselves. Or something) that develops it's site for viewing in Firefox, and as such optimises features around Firefox's functionality. This is the time of year when there's a huge emphasis on romantic gestures between wifes/husbands/boyfriends/girlfriends. A lot of places celebrate this period between Christmas and Easter with an event of some kind. This particular site is one of them, and everything seemed to be going fine. Until I realised that the event doesn't actually work if you use IE.

Putting it very simply, you have to interact with other users, gaining points for every interaction until you reach a certain number of points. You then recieve a heart that can be spent on items made especially for the event. Simple? Well, yes. At first you needed to gain 200 points (minimum gain 2) to earn a heart, and you need 96bhearts to gain all the items. After protest from a few users, it was decided that the number of points needed would be halved and the number of hearts gained doubled. That's all well and good, except that for me, being an IE user, the code isn't compatible and I'm stuck on the old mechanics. I made the admin team aware of the issue (in a very curteous and civil manner, I might add) and ended up getting the kind of tongue lashing normally reserved by a mother-in-law when a hamster's birthday is forgotten.

So after a bit of sarcasm and a few home truths the team member decided to be civil with me, and we tried to fix the problems. We got a minor difficulty sorted out, but we never managed to fix the event, with the advice given to me as "just cope with it." Which is like saying to a person with a broken neck "Well, you can walk, you'll be fine. Just don't bump into anything and don't lean down." Avoiding the problem doesn't make it better.

It's times like this that I wish we were back in the old days. I don't mean the 54kb/s days, I mean the dual browser days- you had IE and you had Netscape, and that was it. Everything worked, there were no functionality problems because they were, essentially, the same browser. I don't get it. The saying goes "If it's not broke, don't fix it." IE isn't broke. It displays web pages, that's all you need it for. You don't need a spell checker or addons or any other crap like that. You've got a word processor, that's got a spell checker, use that! And as for the addons? That's why you have an Internet browser in the first place, so you can find a site that does those things! You don't need them integrated into your browser, that defeats the point!

In my opinion the only decent thing to come out of the Browser Wars is the open availability of tabbed browsing. Apart from that? Firefox can kiss my big fat hairy ass!

And over in the technology world...

2009-01-06T21:06:00.002Z

Browsing the technology news isn't something I do very often, but it seems that I'm missing something, somewhere. I decided to take a look today¹ and I saw the news that Linux-based machines are starting to sell more than non-Windows, non-Macintosh based machines. Last time I checked, Windows and Macinstosh were the two major operating systems for a PC, so it's only logical that a known-name like Linux will be the best seller outside of these systems.

And to be honest, that's the only really interesting thing that's happening in the world of technology at the moment. No flying cars, no jet packs and no teleportation devices. And no time travel yet, either. But time travel's something that deserves a blog of it's ow, due to the complex nature.

And as I'm now talking about nothing, I'm going to stop.

¹You know. For kicks.

Pratt by name...

2008-12-29T21:47:00.000Z

I'm not normally one to comment on news stories, but I saw something today that I had to comment on.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20081229/tts-uk-soccer-england-sendingoff-bfb92cd.html

Nothing really unusual about this, but then, unusual isn't what this blog's about. The final paragraph, though, rather amused me.

Also in 2000 an English amateur player, Lee Todd, was sent off after two seconds when he responded to the referee's whistle to start the game by saying "xxxx me, that was loud" and was dismissed for foul and abusive language.

It could only happen in the UK...

Post X-Mas On The Web

2008-12-27T16:32:00.000Z

Okay, this is my first post here, but instead of having a long winded introduction to myself, I'm just going to get straight into things. I want to talk about one particular website's Christmas/Winter event, and this website is Solia Online.

Solia is an avatar forum website in a similar vein to GaiaOnline that hasn't been around that long, but it already has a dedicated fanbase, due to it bribing members of another, now defunct, website into joining with the promise of items and gold being transfered, all packaged as an update. But that's another story, for another post, for another day. I want to talk about their winter event.

Instead of having a "traditional" Christmas event, Solia's decided to do something different. They decided to have something called "Nightmare After Christmas", where members of the site are divided into three different factions- humans, zombies and ghouls- and fight to the death. When you reach a certain number of kills, you can get an event item. There's only one problem with this idea though (aside from the near-plagarism of the name)- it's a shitload of fuck.

The problems arise right from your joining. You can't choose which faction you join. It's totally random, so from the word 'go' there's been an imbalance between the factions, as it seems that zombies are the most common race. This makes it harder for humans and ghouls to gain kills and get the items. And while we're on the subject of the items, each faction has it's own item set, so you have to do three times the work to get all the items. But it's hard enough to get enough kills for a single item as you can sit there, chipping away at one person's health only for someone else to jump in and get the killing blow. Add that you've got a stamina bar that limits the number of times you can attack that only fills up by posting, but that feature doesn't seem to work. A number of people have complained that the stamina bar hasn't been refilling at all, which is something that should have been ironed out in the beta stage. It's bullshit of the highest degree. People have also found that their kills haven't been registering- again, it should have been ironed out in beta.

So, what happens when you die? Well, that's easy, you go to the hospital, pay 45 gold and get your health back. It doesn't seem that bad, does it? Well, as you can only earn a maximum of 40 gold per post, you have to make at least two posts to earn the gold you need to heal yourself. But that means that there's two chances for people to attack you, so you can find yourself getting killed as soon as you get healed. Which obviously means you need to make two more posts to earn the gold, making four chances to get yourself killed. It's a vicious cycle, but as posting is the only way to earn gold, you can't really complain about it. Unless you've got a load of unwanted items and you're willing to sell them back to the store, then you may be able to get the gold you need. But why should you drain your inventory just to take part in an event? It's crazy bullshit.

So if you don't like the sound of that you can always opt out. But if you do that your avatar doesn't change back to it's pre-event human form, as you would expect. I managed to change myself back to my human form as I didn't want any part of that fuckshit, but I can't remember how, so I can't advise others on how to do so. In fact, the feature to be able to change back wasn't added until a number of hours after the event was started. Also, once you opt out, you can't join back in. That's right, once you click the link saying "I don't want to fight" that's it, game over. You can't join in later even if you wanted to, or if you somehow click the link by accident, you're fucked.

But going back to the initial problem of not being able to choose your faction, at least the admin team added the feature to change your faction. But not until twenty four hours after the start of the event. You read that right, they're adding things as they go along. They released an unfinished event, that had no testing (or so it seems) and told people that it was the real deal. What kind of bullshit is that? You wouldn't expect a car company to sell an unfinished car that had no safety tests, so why should this be the same? It's laziness, plain and simple. Solia's team wanted an event, so they quickly lashed something together and quickly put it on the server and allowed people to access it. But then, as I stated at the start of my post, they literally bribed people into joining, so I'm not really surprised.

So, at the end of the day, we're being issued with an unfinished, untested event, which has actually been badly thought out. The battle system has been made so that it's totally imbalanced, but despite the number of complaints and glitch reports, nothing has been done. And when people say how unhappy their are, the mods lock the topic, so no-one else can add to it. The moderators are gagging people if they don't agree with what the Solia team wants people to think, and they want people to think that this is a great event, when it isn't. But if you surround yourself with "yes" men, you turn to crap. It's happened to GaiaOnline already, it's starting to happen to Roliana, and it's only a matter of time before it happens to Solia Online.

Xean, signing out.